


No Varnish

by Verecunda



Category: Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Genre: First Time, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 21:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7331515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verecunda/pseuds/Verecunda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pip despairs of his blacksmith's hands, but Herbert has quite another opinion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Varnish

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Don't own yah, don't own yah!

Mr. Pocket’s house in Hammersmith was in such a perpetual state of uproar that even upstairs in his room, with the door tightly closed, Pip almost did not heard not hear the knock, or Herbert’s voice on the other side: “Handel?” Before he could get up and answer the door himself, it opened a crack, and Herbert’s light head appeared round the frame. “Hollo! So here I find you!”

“Herbert? I thought you were heading back to Barnard’s?”

“It’s getting rather late, so Father and I agreed that I am as well staying here for the night and starting for London early tomorrow. Well,” he amended, “ _I_ decided. I rather think Father has given up for tonight!”

Pip managed a weak smile. That was certainly the impression he had got when he had slipped away. Mrs. Pocket had been engaged in some new altercation with the housemaid, the baby had contrived to entrap itself in the coal scuttle, and Mr. Pocket had sat amidst it all with a look of consummate abstraction.

“A good idea,” he said, trying to hit upon something cheerful to say, “I can walk you to the coach in the morning.”

The falsity of his tone did not even fool himself, so he was not surprised to see Herbert put his head on one side, the better to study him. “Handel, what _is_ the matter? I should have thought you’d be exulting after your triumph in the boat-race today, but you were quite mumchance all through dinner. Don’t think I did not notice, my dear fellow,” he said quickly, just as Pip opened his mouth to deny the charge, and came over to sit next to him on the edge of the bed, looking earnestly into his face.

Despite himself, Pip smiled. Herbert’s manner was so disarmingly frank that it was impossible to remain reserved with him, impossible even to wish to be so.

“I’m sorry, Herbert. I know I should be more cheerful. I just can’t help thinking about what Drummle said.”

The truth was that his triumph today had been quite checked when Drummle, at the termination of the race, had thrown out a look even more sulky and inimical than usual, and muttered a barbed remark about “brute strength versus skill”. It was nothing, of course, but it had put him uncomfortably in mind of his boating instructor’s remark of his having the “arm of a blacksmith”.

He looked down at his arms and studied them with distaste, having rolled up his shirtsleeves for the purpose. Bared as they were, there was no denying their size, the growth of muscle brutishly evident. His dissatisfaction was increased by his hands: his coarse, common hands with their thick fingers and hard callouses which no amount of genteel living could entirely do away with. To his eye, the comprehensive effect was of two large and unwieldy hams.

He had told Herbert of his instructor’s words then, and Herbert seemed to catch the drift of his look now.

“Oh, my dear Handel, you surely cannot still be brooding on that? The man meant nothing at all by it.”

“I know, I know,” said Pip. “But I could wish he hadn’t said it within hearing of the others.”

“Why, as to that,” said Herbert, “I dare say it meant nothing to Startop, and as for Drummle - well! - I doubt he sees further than the end of his own nose. My father holds it as an absolute fact that he is the dullest knife he has ever had the misfortune to grind.”

“Your father, I recall, also holds it as an absolute fact that no varnish can disguise the grain of the wood.” He turned his hands palm up, disclosing their mean, labouring appearance. “I’m afraid no amount of varnish can disguise these.”

“Let me see, dear boy.” Before Pip had a chance to object, Herbert took him by the wrists and pulled the offending hands towards himself, studying them intently with his brows drawn in a very creditable impersonation of a medical man, or other interested professional. “What have we here, then? Two arms - the full complement of arms, indeed. Good, strong ones. Eminently respectable.”

Pip gave a snort. When he had come up to his room, he had been determined to be morose, but Herbert was quickly doing away with that determination.

“Oh,” he said now, feigning surprise, “and that’s not all. Two hands as well!” At this, his fingers let go their hold, drifting lightly over Pip’s wrists and further, over his palms. “Excellent hands, too. I perceive here a most harmonious balance of strength and gentleness.” He traced the lines across them with his fingertips, one thumb rubbing a particularly rough welt left over from the forge. His examination was conscientious, his touch exquisitely gentle, and Pip found himself enraptured, even more so when Herbert brought his fingers to align with his own. “The full ten fingers,” he declared with great approval, “all present and accounted for. All in all, a capital pair of hands!”

They both burst out laughing, Pip, for his own part, quite helpless to do anything else. Now, in the face of Herbert’s examination, he could see just how absurd his despondency had been. He looked down. Herbert’s hands looked so small, lying against his own, but he found their touch infinitely comforting. He did not think he had ever taken such comfort in another’s touch before. A feeling of perfect sympathy passed between them, and in that moment it seemed to Pip the most natural thing in the world to lean in and kiss him. 

The touch of Herbert’s lips was as warm and light as that of his fingers, and immeasurably sweeter; but it lasted only a moment or two before Pip’s awareness returned, and he sharply retreated. Herbert looked as startled as he felt himself: his eyes wide with surprise, his face coloured by a high flush that echoed the one Pip could feel rising in his own.

“Pardon me, Herbert, I wasn’t thinking…”

But Herbert’s face broke into a brilliant smile. “Not at all, I’m sure,” he murmured, before drawing him in once more.

A second kiss quickly turned to a third, then a fourth, each growing bolder, deeper, more lingering than the last, and, by and by, they sank onto the mattress, folded up in each other. Once, an uncommonly sharp burst of noise made them break apart in alarm, but after listening for a second or two they perceived that it was coming from downstairs, and merely heralded some new crisis in Mrs. Pocket’s feud with the maidservant, and they looked at each other in amusement. To Pip, however, it served as a salutary reminder that they were surrounded on all sides by Herbert’s family, and he suddenly feared that he might be taking an unforgiveable liberty by kissing Herbert like this under his father’s roof.

“Perhaps we should stop,” he murmured into Herbert’s hair.

At that, Herbert drew just far enough away to fix him with a look of remarkable severity. “If you try to stop now, dear boy, I will positively explode.”

“But what if someone should come in?”

“And who _should_ come in?”

He was right. The atmosphere of the house was such that it was unlikely they should be missed. For all that, however, he couldn’t banish the misgiving that this would be the one time someone _would_ miss them, that any minute now someone would burst into his room unannounced: Mr. Pocket, maybe, or Startop, or - God forbid - Drummle. That very notion compelled him to disengage himself from Herbert’s limbs and bound across the room to double-lock the door. When he returned to the bed, Herbet was chuckling.

“My dear Handel,” he said fondly. “Always the sensible one.”

Pip did not trouble to refute the charge, only smiled and bore down on Herbert once more.

Dimly, he thought he must be dreaming. It seemed wholly improbable that he and Herbert should be here like this, yet at the same time, it seemed entirely right. He had no prior experience of such things: all his knowledge of what men could do together had been gleaned from rough jokes traded in the taproom of the Three Jolly Bargemen, and he recoiled from the thought that anything so harsh could be associated with anything that passed between Herbert and himself. So he put them quite out of his mind, instead allowing instinct to guide them both.

Kisses and muffled laughter, both increasingly breathless, and little by little they grew bolder, more abandoned, in their caresses. Neckcloths and waistcoats were discarded in a most cavalier manner, and straying hands eagerly sought warm skin beneath loosened clothes.

A sudden gasp from Herbert brought Pip abruptly back to his senses, and he raised his face from where it had been buried in the crook of Herbert’s neck to look down at him in alarm. “Herbert? Have I hurt you?”

Herbert’s eyes, when he opened them, were dazed, but his smile was brighter than ever. “Never in life, dear boy. I just didn’t expect you to hold on so tightly.”

Guiltily, Pip looked down at his hands where they grasped Herbert’s hips, pressing him down into the mattress, and he took them away, appalled at himself. “Please forgive me, Herbert,” he stammered, “I don’t know my own strength, I-”

But Herbert silenced him by entangling a hand in his hair and drawing him in for another kiss. “I won’t hear of it, Handel. In fact,” and now there was a decided note of mischief in both his look and his voice, “I would take it very kindly if you did it again.”

Of all the lessons Pip learned under Mr. Pocket’s roof, this was by far the most enjoyable. He and Herbert had never had much cause for restraint between them, and now there was not the least shame or uncertainty as they went about discovering the ways of each other’s bodies: how a touch here or a kiss there could elicit the most delicious of responses, the sensation of skin against skin, the honest delight of sharing pleasure. It was an education unlike any other, and it seemed wholly correct that he and Herbert should embark upon it together. Their very bodies fit together as if they had been fashioned for the purpose.

Later, as they lay together, Herbert nestling in his arms with every appearance of contentment, Pip continued to wonder at it. He knew he could never banish Estella from his heart: she was too vital, too inextricably bound up with every thought and dream that had formed his character, from the very moment he had met her. But here, at least, with Herbert, he could know happiness as well as love, and it was this thought that sustained him as he fell asleep at last.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't be the only one who reckons Herbert would find Pip's physical strength a bit of a turn-on, can I...?


End file.
